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I think this deserves some more attention – I’ve not seen it on Twitter, so I suspect few people know about it. Blogger Debbie Davies was considering reporting Roger Helmer to the police over his Tweet and also wrote to him requesting a meeting.

I don’t know Debbie as I found this via Google but she appears far from clueless when it comes to the police as she is involved in and gives speeches at police advisory groups.

But rather than let the law do it’s thing, Roger chose to reply accusing her of having a “hostile attitude” (Really Roger? Debbie isn’t the one with the problem) and saying he thought she was wasting police time, and that she could be facing six months in jail and/or a fine if she reported him!

Anyone think this is reasonable behaviour from an elected politician?

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I haven’t seen the text of this as 10-minute bills don’t get printed until their second reading, but from the title and debate alone it seems to me like Labour’s Keith Vaz is on to a good thing with this, the “Succession to the Crown Bill”. Although the debate is available online, there don’t seem to be any nice soundbites in it. Instead, I’ll just give you the bill summary that I believe says all that’s needed:” A Bill to remove any distinction between the sexes in determining the succession to the Crown.”

Hopefully the idea will go somewhere. Get those at the top so set the best example and all that. Sadly, random Wikipediaing the other day about the abdication of Edward taught me that the Statute of Westminster (1931) states that (sensibly) the line of succession must remain the same throughout the entire British Commonwealth.

There’s a whole host of nations in the commonwealth that are not exactly at the forefront of equality so this initiative may be doomed, but I still think it’s a good thing to at least try.

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Roger Helmer (Photo by Berchemboy at en.wikipedia.org)Roger Helmer!

There, now I’ve got your attention. No, that wasn’t an expletive although it could well be – Roger Helmer is a Tory MEP who is in the new recently for his Tweet:

Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to “turn” a consenting homosexual?

I wasn’t going to blog about this as although it’s annoyed me, it’s been handled elsewhere, by several people.

But two things have made me change my mind. Firstly, the mainstream coverage such as the BBC and the Guardian is reporting heavily on the homophobic angle complete with quotes from Stonewall but completely ignoring the Transphobia. (Yes, this is one of those instances where it is an LGB and T issue)

And for some commenters on other sites who have the wrong end of the stick (I’ve seen this in a couple of places) – Trans surgery is not just a society/body image issue. Fixing society isn’t going to mean surgery isn’t required, as having the wrong kind of sex hormone causes depression. Our fate as a group will be entwined with the medical profession for the foreseeable future, at least until some Iain-M-Banksian utopic future where one can change physical sex by just thinking about it. (It still takes about a year!)

But back on topic, it appears that having stuck his foot in it in a way that one might generously claim could have been misinterpreted, Roger is keen to make his position clear in a very “I’m not Homophobic/Transphobic, but…” way with the following wonderful quote:

I am making a comparison between a lifestyle choice of a homosexual who would prefer not to be a homosexual and a lifestyle choice of a woman who would prefer to be a man …

It seems to me that in both cases it is what they call a valid lifestyle choice.

Foot meet mouth. But he does seem to be confused:

I am not a medical person. I know that there is a number of practitioners, admittedly a minority, who think [reparative therapy] does work.

Yes, and there are many people who think that an exorcism will cure all sorts of things. But you don’t go to your GP and expect them to be able to provide an exorcism as they’d quite rightly get hauled up in front of the GMC for offering treatment with no provable benefit. Registered psychologists are held to the same standards, so if they offer a discredited treatment they can expect to be censured.

But the subtleties of this seem to be lost of poor Roger.

On the plus side the Conservative party themselves seem pretty wound up with him, particularly LGBTory. I’d hope he’s in for a nice chat with his Whips real soon now with strict instructions to sit down, shut up and do the right thing for once.

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I think most people that read this probably also follow me on Twitter, but for those that don’t I’ve been asked by one of the Judges – David Allen Green – to put in a mention for The Orwell Prize.

In particular, he’s asked me to encourage anyone with a Trans-related blog to enter. So if you have one and you’re based in the UK, why not enter? It’s self-nominating only and the deadline is tomorrow. The only hard part is selecting which ten posts to put forward.

As David himself puts it, political blogs include any “by those on whom policy is inflicted“. I would say that anyone Transgender has probably had extensive experience of having policy inflicted upon them.

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The Scottish “Obtaining sex by deception” case with Samantha Brooks that I reported on last year is back in the news again, as the defendant was in court on Friday. Although it’s been reported in the usual gay press, their reports are third-hand with the primary sources appearing to be The Daily Record and The Scotsman as their stories were published first and give more detail not mentioned by other outlets.

To summarise, there is no mention of any transgender angle to the case in the reporting and I’m sure given there appear to be at least two independent sources, one of them would have mentioned it had there been. That does not mean however it could not have worrying implications for trans people should Brooks be found guilty. The charge is still unclear, with mentions in articles of “obtaining sexual contact by fraud” but as before, a search of relevant case law and legislation turned up nothing.

There was discussion in 2006 about updating Scottish law to include a better definition of consent, which would have included an identity-related offence that would have excluded this sort of thing but this did not go through. If “consent” really is undefined in Scotland, it appears case law may be about to create something very unfortunate for many Trans people.

Friday’s hearing was just to ender a plea and there is another hearing on the 9th February, but it is not clear what that hearing is in relation to. I believe it may be possible to obtain a copy of publicly available court papers in such cases and time permitting I shall attempt this.

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As a Trans person, I get quite used to the view from extremist quarters that I shouldn’t exist. Apparently, I somehow offend the natural order of the universe or some such nonsense. Fortunately, such idiotic comments are rare.

I find some perverse amusement that this time, I’m being told I (Or rather we) should somehow no longer exist as Liberal Democrats rather than as a Trans person. This is according to Tom Watson over at Labour Uncut:

The opulence of Carlton Gardens might calm his lieutenants tomorrow, but Clegg’s crisis will not go away. His party no longer has a reason to exist.

Tom wonders what Clegg’s approach would be “as the Lib Dem grassroots react to the result”. My reaction is this: Our vote held solid and was over 20 points above the national polls and, if I have my maths right, about 7 points above the by-election polls. Between us, the two coalition parties gained more votes than Labour.

I’d have preferred a win, but in the middle of cuts that all parties would know would hurt the party in power, this doesn’t strike me as the kind of disaster for the Liberal Democrats that Labour would have liked. Coverage on BBC Radio (1, 2 and 4) this morning was generally positive towards the Liberal Democrats and somewhat more negative towards the Conservatives.

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According to Pink News, public bodies have been asked to report on LGBT staff numbers.

This on the same day that the Pink Paper report that workers in Bath have failed to provide these details when asked.

Oops.

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There is quite a lot wrong with this story. (Daily Express link, also reported by The Sun and the local paper)

I’m not sure what would typically be an appropriate sentence for such an offence. The way it’s been reported, she’s “got off lightly” but both papers have their own agendas. Transphobic reporting like this isn’t itself news.

But the quotes from the Judge, if accurate, worry me:

I am in no doubt that you have led something of a nightmare existence as a transsexual for the entirety of your life. The result is you have walked something of a sexual tightrope, leading to an extremely sad and depressing existence. The reality is this is your final chance to change difficult areas of your sexuality. You have received Government funding and if I send you to prison I would be sentencing you to a continuation of your sexual nightmare, possibly forever.

Gender and sexuality are completely different, so it sounds as if the Judge knows little of the issues. I would guess this is because they don’t have any information easily available to them when working on cases – I do wonder if the outcome might have been different had the defence solicitor been different or it had been in front of a different judge, which is of course not desirable.

And of course the underlying issue is that the prisons are not set up to handle transgender prisons. If the judge can be convinced it would be a “nightmare” to send someone transgendered to prison, why is anyone transgender in prison?

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I should open by saying I’m in the Yes camp when it comes to AV because I don’t think FPTP has delivered particularly well over the last few decades. It certainly hasn’t helped with marginalised groups in parliament.

However, one “bonus” of AV is that a potential MP needs to maintain at least some level of support amongst 50% of their constituents. It occurs to me that if a candidate is a member of a minority group (I myself am Trans and a bi-curious lesbian for example, I would imagine the situation could be as bad or worse in certain areas for anyone who looks a bit foreign) then they instantly lose some proportion of support.

I suspect this does not matter so much with FPTP because first choice votes are less likely to be affected. Someone whose first preference vote is the BNP who would otherwise vote Tory might not list a second choice just because the Conservatives put up a candidate who is only second/third generation British.

I would imagine the situation improves dramatically with STV however – with bigger constituencies, there will be more members of a given group and thus it’s easier for a candidate supported by a marginalised group to get the necessary votes to gain a seat.

I doubt we’ll see this mentioned by the No camp because they mostly seem to be old-school and unlikely to be “in” with equality, but I’d appreciate knowing what others think about this. Is consideration of second and third choice votes likely to affect how panels choose candidates in 2015, 2020 and beyond?

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It seems BT, inventors of the Cleanfeed system that went spectacularly wrong in 2008 when they tried to filter Wikipedia, causing issues accessing the site for many, now want to go further. Claire “Won’t someone think of the children!” Perry MP has apparently just had a meeting with Mike Galvin, Head of Innovation at BT about the MP’s plans for a porn block and has tweeted to say it was a good meeting.

For those not familiar with Mike Galvin, he was involved in BT’s trials with Phorm, so he has a record with this sort of thing.

Perhaps BT would like to comment?